


Will I still hate you when the moon is full?

by DiseasedBreeze



Category: Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Furry, Human Hunting, M/M, Masturbation, Monster hunter Dick, Multichapter, Nudity, Omegaverse, Scent Kink, Supernatural AU - Freeform, Werewolf Slade, animal hunting, dubcon, handjob, humping, meat and blood talk, smut to come, transformations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:07:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27382426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiseasedBreeze/pseuds/DiseasedBreeze
Summary: Dick Grayson knew that sometimes, if they weren't stopped, werewolves would hunt humans. He knew that Slade is particularly had a fondness for it, so it was inevitable, probably, that he'd end up in one of the werewolf's twisted blood games eventually. It doesn't make it any easier. It just means he should have known better.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson
Comments: 88
Kudos: 258





	1. The Hunt

Dick had heard of the Human Hunt.

It was an old practice among werewolf packs, started years ago in the snowy forests of Europe. It was only natural that the predators werewolves were grew hired of hunting mere animals and desired more dangerous game to test their strength against. The rules were brutally simple, the human would run and the werewolves would hunt them through the woods. If the human managed to cross the river without being caught then they won a reward for being an entertaining hunt. If they didn’t they’d be eaten alive like any other prey.

Slade had adapted it remarkably well to an urban setting. Instead of a river to scramble across the lights of the highway made of a moving river of light. It was so close, but so was Slade and the werewolf was faster than him.

Dick should probably count himself lucky that Slade considered him worth hunting, rather than just killing and eating him like he did with other hunters. He should feel lucky that Slade had just stripped him naked and scratched the rules of the hunt of a wall for him just so he knew what was happening. Should have been, but all Dick can think about is how close he is to dying as the werewolf’s shadow falls across the alley’s mouth.

“Grrrrrrayson.” The word is half lost in the growl slips past the dagger sized fangs and the lolling tongue. It was hard to speak past the jaws of the wolf but Slade made the effort. Even if the result was slurred and inhuman ol’ grayback wanted his prey to know they were being hunted by something that could _think._

His black claws bite into the dirty bricks of the alleyway. Slade preferred the hybrid form for hunting human prey. He had the dexterity of humanoid fingers and the power of the wolf’s snapping jaws.

“I can smelll you Grrayson.” The werewolf pants with the breathing of a heavy wild animal. “I can taaste your blood.”

Those last words are accompanied by a licking of furry jaws.

“Youuu can’t hiiide Grrayson.” A deep animal sniffing. “Rrrrun for me. Flyyy lllittle birdieeee.”

Dick grits his teeth and pulls the rag tight across his leg wound. Human blood was like catnip for monsters. He could cut through the sewers and Slade would still follow him, hell there’d just be _two_ blood thirsty monsters tracking him then. He should think himself lucky it was just a claw wound and he wasn’t going to be turned to a werewolf, except Slade’s a son-of-a-bitch and is just toying with him. 

He was worse than a cat when it came to playing with his food and seeing just how much he could bleed his prey before they couldn’t run any more was a favorite game of his fine.

Fine,  it’d just be another time Slade’s arrogance cost him a meal then.

H e grits his teeth and forces himself to stumble forwards. The werewolf sees him and snorts in satisfaction, letting him have a headstart as he continues the chase.

Slade doesn’t want the hunt to be over yet, but he also isn’t going to give the prey any time to rest. Slade wants him to be tired and desperate but defeated by his own body’s inability to go on, just so Slade can feel like an apex predator.

The problem was that his body was failing him, he’s been running without a chance to catch his breath for hours now. Slade was toying with him, hurting him just enough to make him run then following slowly but unstoppably behind. If he had silver, hell if he had wolfbane...but no. Slade wasn’t interested in a fair fight, he was interested in proving the superiority of his predator’s werewolf body over the helpless human prey. That was the reason why he stooped so low as to hunt prey on commission; he just liked being rewarded for the gift of getting to hunt humans.

There was no chance of finding wolfbane growing in the solid concrete streets of the Narrows, and even less of finding silver here. There was no way for him to summon other hunters, Slade had made sure of that by stripping him,  his only chance at survival was winning the hunt. 

He stumbles out of the alleyway and forces his screaming legs into a run. He’s so focused on momentum he doesn’t notice the broken bottle until it’s cutting into his foot. He winces but forces himself to keep going despite the  trail of blood drops that were as good as a neon sigh showing where he’s gone. He can hear the highway, he can see the lights and smell the petrol fumes, he’s so close, he’s so...close...

He turns the last corner and there, between him and the river of lights, is Slade.

The car lights illuminate him, sending golden waves of light over his silver fur as he waits. No, NO, he was so close he can  _taste_ his freedom.

Dick’s run slows to a limping walk as exhaustion and despair and pain break over him. He stumbles forwards with a pathetic desperation, until he’s only a few steps in front of the werewolf. Slade grins, his lips drawing back from his teeth.

Dick looks up at him then grins back. Before Slade can stop him he dives between Slade’s legs, the werewolf’s suddenly grasping claws missing by inches,  and vaults over the barrier onto the highway.

Immediately his world narrows to a rush of metal and lights and thin strips of road. There’s movement rushing all around him but he can’t stop now; it’s sink or swim. There’s a chorus of honking horns and squealing brakes and loud swearing but naked crackheads running onto the highway was hardly unheard of in Gotham.  It’s like trying to swim through quicksand but every second he’d not dead is a second closer to escaping.

A  car sideswipes him, he feels the skin scraped clean off his arm, then he’s sucked into the wake of a passing van, manages to keep his footing in time to nearly get rammed by an SUV that brakes just in time. He doesn’t notice, he’s too busy fighting forwards with all the strength left in his shaking legs, then...

He’s over the other barrier before he notices it’s there and collapses into the safe, still darkness of the drainage ditch. There’s screams and curses behind him but there’s time to be worried about being mobbed by angry drivers when he can see again. His lungs heave as he sucks in sweet breaths of the petrol scented air.

A clawed hand grabs him by one aching arm and hauls him up to eye level. Through the haze of adrenaline, pain and tiredness Dick sees one blue eye and one empty eye socket.

Slade.

“I made it across the highway.” Dick croaks. “The Hunt’s over, I won. You have to let me go.”

Slade snorts.

“Why would I do that?” the werewolf licks his furry lips. “What makes you think I’m just going to let you go after a chase like that?”

“I escaped...” Dick says weakly, aware he can’t do anything but talk and he can barely do that. “The rules...”

“No-one _escapes_.” Slade growls, holding his close enough for Dick to feel the warmth of his breath on his bare skin. 

“The hunt proves your worth.” He says then bites down.

D ick finds the strength to scream and scream until he runs out of air. The teeth sink deep into his neck and shoulder, sinking in deep enough to nick the bone. Blood spurts from the bite and runs hotly down his bare skin. The werewolf growls, manages to bite down even harder, then lets go to lick the blood from his lips.

“Congratulations Grayson, you won.” A claw strokes his cheek. “Now you will never have to be prey again. Welcome to the pack, kid.”


	2. The Sickness

Exhaustion and pain are what makes Dick pass out, but the disease is what keeps him under.

When a vampire was turned every drop of their blood left their body by any means possible. He’d thought that was gross when Bruce had first told him and when he saw it he’d thought it must be the worst thing ever.

This felt more like drowning.

He only remembers snatches between the bone-deep wave of sickness that held him under. Even breathing felt like he was fighting against the sweltering meat suit his body has become, like his flesh is trying to reject his soul. He couldn’t move and could barely breathe. His body was at the same time constantly soaked in cold sweat and burning with fever heat. Every muscle fiber ached with the waves of relentless pain and he often couldn’t as much as squeak, let alone scream.

Sometimes he managed to work up enough strength to open an eye, but he couldn’t work out anything from the brief flashes out sight. Sometimes his vision was just too blurry, but sometimes it was painfully oversharpened or bleached by harsh blue light.

He may have dreamed, it’s hard to tell. The pain of the disease sunk deepest into his brain, as hard as he fought, he couldn’t hold a thought for long. He spent most of his day unable to plan or figure anything out, just laying still trying to hold onto his strength and his mind.

Sometimes he’d be moved, he remembered in his more lucid moments the feeling of something smooth and cool under him, or the wind against his body as he was carried like a doll. Sometimes the light seared his eyes, sometimes it was so dark he couldn’t tell if he’d opened his eyes or not. Sometimes he thought he’d moved a finger, sometimes he was sure he merely thought he had. Most of the time there was just cold and stillness and the hard ground under him, but at times there was something warm and soft next to him. Later he’d realize that it had been Slade in wolf form.

There were times, and he didn’t know how often they were because he wasn’t always conscious or lucid for them, where his burning body would be hauled upright and the increased pull of gravity on his heavy head made him feel like his head was going to fall off like a bowling ball balanced on a drinking straw. His mouth would be forced open and someone, probably Slade, would carefully pour a warm herb-tasting tea into his mouth and force him to swallow it. He hated that most of all, whenever he was conscious enough to try and struggle, he thinks he made some pathetic whining sounds as he choked on it. He was always forced to swallow it all and afterwards the pain got worse.

There were herbs that could slow the spread of lycanthropy and lessen the effects of the disease. The bitter drink Slade forced down his throat like medicine was the opposite of that. Every time after he’d swallowed it became harder and harder to think. Every time he feels the pain ebb it seems there’s another draught to bring it back and nothing he can do to stop it. Whatever moments he has where he can still think feel like a gift and, eventually they start getting longer.

The fresh waves of sick pain every time he’s fed another herbal draught don’t go away but slowly, little by little, he recovers his mind. Like training a weakened muscle he practices keeping his thoughts together and forces his body to feel his again.

The first time he manages to open his eyes on purpose it feels like his first step to escape. The light is still too bright for him to see anything but he knows he can do it now, that this is another thing he’ll be able to overcome. He focuses on keeping his breathing steady, training his vision like he trained his mind then, once he’d mastered that, he worked on training his body.

He was still exhausted and could barely move but the waves of pain were ebbing. It wasn’t until later he realized what that meant, he was just too focused on simply getting his body to move.

The first thing he did after he got his ability to think back was relearn how to time Slade’s forcefeeding of him so he could get ready to escape without him finding out. He snatches glimpses of his cell in the moments he could see past the pain.

Like he thought he was still naked, on what he now knew was a concrete floor. The light that sometimes burned his eyes was from a small window at the top of the wall. So he was in a basement. He couldn’t fit through the window, hell, he couldn’t stand right now, but he’d escaped from hundreds of basements before. He could do this.

He bides his time, gathering his strength until, finally, he can stand.

That is when he realizes he’s chained to the wall. He bites back a swear, struggling to stay on his feet as his still numb fingers trace the metal chain. The chain links are almost an inch thick. With care he feels over the chain links up to the collar around his neck. He wills feeling back into his fingers as he searches for the join or catch so he can lever it open. He finds a weld line.

The _bastard_ , he’s really welded him to the wall.

Dick desperately traces the end of the chain across the floor to the wall. The end has been firmly anchored into the brickwork but that’s not what draws his attention. There’s more chains there.

How many others had Slade done this too?

Shit! He tugs hard on the chain out of desperation. It doesn’t budge no matter how hard he wrenches at it in his desperation. His fingernails scratch pointlessly at the metal as he tries to find a way to wriggle out of the sealed metal cuff. He tries so hard to put all his strength against the chain he pulls a muscle in his shoulder. Dick hisses with pain and raises his hand to it. His fingers touch the bite mark and he freezes in disbelief. He was expecting it to still be a bloody scab at least but the knotted flesh under his fingers is a fully healed _scar._ Even for a newly infected werewolf for the bite to be this far healed…It must have been nearly a month.

He’s been down here for nearly a _month?_ The revelation has him frozen. The rest of the hunters, the rest of his _family…_ Did they know what’s happened? Did they think he had just vanished? Were they even still looking for him? _Why hasn’t Bruce saved him yet?!_

Dick is so caught up in despair he misses the sound of the door unlocking. He catches it opening in the corner of his eye and freezes. Too late he realizes he should have played dead instead as Slade’s one eye fixes on him.

“You’re up.” He says with a smile that’s no less creepy for appearing genuine. “I knew you wouldn’t let it keep you down.”

Dick tries to say…something, he’s not sure what. All that comes out is a dry-throated wheeze.

“You must be thirsty. Here.”

In a few steps Slade is in front of him, already holding a fresh cup of that foul pain-inducing brew. Dick tries to turn away but Slade holds his head in warm hands that are nonetheless as strong as steel.

“Drink.”

Dick tries to protest again, to say something about the pain, but all that comes out is a weak whine.

“I know it hurts.” Slade says softly as he forces Dick’s mouth open anyway and pours the liquid into it. “It’s just your humanity dying.”

Dick splutters as he tries to spit. Slade covers his mouth with one hand and strokes his neck with the other until it’s swallow or suffocate.

“There, there, you had no chance of getting it back anyway. Look at you, already standing, already so strong. Soon the last bit of the weak humanity in you will be gone and only the wolf will remain.”

Slade smiles fondly as Dick weakly claws at the hand holding him.

“All the crap you hunters put in you to ‘protect against evil’ has to be flushed out. Wintergreen calls this stuff Wolf _boon_.” He chuckles. “It will put hairs on your chest.”

Dick feels sick. His weakened legs can’t hold him up anymore so he slumps to the ground, shivering against a cold he didn’t feel before and feeling like he’s going to throw up without knowing if he can. It doesn’t help to know he’s literally being poisoned, it was just the disease that was lycanthropy was healing him fast than the poison could kill him.

He hears a thump of something being dropped and cracks open an eye. Slade is back with a grocery bag and despite the lingering pain of the wolfboon drink he’s suddenly aware of how long it’s been since he’s eaten.

Despite the damn chains this was more of a regular basement than a torture dungeon. There’s a careful circle clear on anything he can use around him, but now he can focus he sees the white shape of a chest freezer and a minifridge on the other side of the underground room.

With a snap Slade unfolds a deck chair and sits down to watch him. Dick glares at him the best he can with his vision trying to go blue and his head feeling like his brain is being pickled.

Slade reaches into the grocery bag and he does Dick can see its filled to the brim with the plastic wrapped trays they used to hold fresh meat at the supermarket. Slade rifles through the trays a bit, then pulls out one holding a sirloin steak. He pops the plastic wrap off with a nail that’s become more of a claw and picks the steak up. Blood is running off it to form a puddle in the bottom of the tray. Dick watches him raise the raw meat to his lips like it’s a sandwich and take a bite of it. His teeth cut through the meat with ease and he chews it. A dribble of blood runs over his chin and into his beard.

It's…fascinating in a way, watching what still seemed like human teeth cutting so easily through the flesh and thick white fat of the raw meat. Dick tries to tell himself that it’s horror he’s feeling but it’s really not. He’s just…never really looked at meat before. When a meal was cooked he ate it, he didn’t put much effort into cooking himself but he’d never put his focus onto a cut of raw meat before. He hadn’t really realized how the muscles connected, that thin sheath around each fiber that held them together and how soft and creamy that yellow white fat looked breaking under Slade’s teeth…

Dick realizes, with real horror this time, that he wants some.

He was…He wasn’t…He didn’t want to eat raw meat and not even as part of a prepared meal with other ingredients added to it! He didn’t even like sushi that much!

His body betrays him again. His stomach rumbles with a sharp loud gurgle. Slade chuckles and finishes eating the steak. He sucks the blood from his fingers like he’d been eating chicken wings.

“You hungry boy?” He asks as he picks up another tray. “If you’re up and walking you’re ready to go back on solid food. You’re probably missing it, right?”

Dick wishes he’d just put the meat in the freezer and go, but apparently Slade’s decided he was going to eat his lunch here. Some small horrified part of him wonders what’s in the freezer then. A human was much smaller than a pig, especially if they’ve been butchered.

He forces himself not to look as Slade pops open another packet of meat, telling himself that he does _not_ want any. Instead he turns around at the faint hiss of foam against concrete as Slade slides the tray over to him.

No, no, no, he does _not…_

His body turns to look at it before he can forces his thoughts through his fuzzy brain in time to stop it and, oh!

The plastic meat tray is full of meatballs. They’re ready to cook, already packed into perfect little spheres of juicy meaty goodness and even if they’re raw they look so _safe_ and _familiar_ and _appetizing._

He can’t keep his mouth from watering.

He’s sore and afraid and his body hurts and he just wants something that feels familiar, just one thing that isn’t strange and dangerous and painful.

Dick tells himself he doesn’t want to eat raw meat out of a plastic tray. He’s lying to himself. Instead he curls up against the pain and tries to will the pain in his stomach away. He hears a disapproving snort from the werewolf and Slade gets up and leaves without a goodbye.

Eventually after what might be hours Dick accepts that the pain isn’t going to go away and returns to practicing movement. He sits, taking in deep breaths as his stomach growls. Part of him wonders why he’s even bothering trying to resist. There’s no-one watching, no-one to be impressed by his self-control and if Slade decides he has to eat the meat he’ll forcefeed it to him like that damn tea and Dick won’t be able to stop him. He waits a little longer, just to prove to himself that he doesn’t _have_ to do this, he could choose not to if he wanted, then reaches for the meat.

The tray’s just out of reach, he frowns and shuffles forwards until the chain is taut and grabs for the tray again. His fingertips just miss it. He nearly cries.

The _bastard,_ Dick can swear he can hear Slade laughing at him. He’s sure if he’d gone for the meat then Slade would have moved it closer for him, but he didn’t, and Slade’s decided to punish him for it. He didn’t hold himself back to _not_ get the meat! His reaching fingers scrabble at empty air less than an inch from the tray. Screw his pride, he wants to _eat._

Dick swears it’s not the chain, it’s his fingernails that grow just long enough for him to clip the tray. It tips over in his direction. The meatballs spill across the floor. Dick snatches the closest one up and shoves it in his mouth. He’s chewed it before it strikes him that he is eating _raw meat off the floor._ He spits it out and immediately his stomach growls and twists with hunger.

What is he becoming?

Dick broods on it for nearly an hour, then slowly and deliberately picks up the wet lump of meat he spat out and eats it.

He finds it more palatable he thought.


	3. The Wait

It takes only three days before Dick starts looking forward to seeing Slade. Despite his best efforts to hold onto the last of his humanity the pain of the Wolfboon soon fades, until Dick is just telling himself he still feels it.

Dick tells himself that the reason he’s happy to see Slade every day is that he’s using it to calculate time, not that like a dog at suppertime he was wagging his tail at the prospect of food. Slade fed him twice a day and he’d found himself watching the door waiting for his return.

It doesn’t escape his notice that while Slade usually eats steak he feeds Dick sausages or hamburger patties, still familiar _human_ foods, to ease him into eating raw meat. Once there was a packet of hotdogs and Slade growled “Junk food” under his breath as he’d thrown them to him.

All there was in reach was a large plastic bowl Slade filled up with the hose and Dick pointedly always cupped his hands and dipped into it when he wanted to drink, and another corner to relieve himself in. The boredom and the frustration of helplessness built up until he was chewing at his chains just to feel like he was doing something.

It didn’t help that there was nothing to do all day but eat, sleep and wait for Slade. It was cold, he was still naked, and he’d quickly learnt to dread Slade deciding he needed a bath and hosing him down. It had only happened twice, but he’d been left shivering afterwards without as much as a towel to dry himself off with.

It seemed whenever he curled up to sleep and shivered from the cold something strong and large with gray-streaked fur came into the basement and slept beside him. He had considered trying to choke Slade when he first tried it, but even if he did get past the werewolf’s enhanced speed, strength and healing factor, the best case result would be he starved to death chained in a basement with the only one who knew where he was dead at his feet. Instead he just swallowed his pride, when Slade insistently nudged his way into his arms Dick accepted that the warm body of the wolf-form werewolf was the only blanket he was going to get.

If Slade in his wolf form stood on his hind legs and put his forelegs on Dick’s shoulders he’d be the same height head to toe that he was in human form, which was taller than Dick. When Dick curled up to sleep and Slade flopped on top of him it covered most of his body in the thick gray wolf fur. He’d always thought Slade in wolf form had stunk but recently it seemed like the smell was more…comforting. Despite his wishes he slept well and when Slade left in the morning he felt a stab of…something. Loneliness maybe, or despair at knowing he was going to be once again stuck here with nothing to do but wait for Slade’s return.

In the times where he was alone he grew restless quickly and the only thing he had to work with was the plastic bowl and the length of chain. It wasn’t quite long enough for him to threaten suicide and the bowl was a lightweight plastic pet bowl too weak to be a weapon. He mostly spent his time trying different ways to pull on the anchor and hope that either metal fatigue weakens the chain or his werewolf strength kicks in.

He’s stopped pretending that the disease hasn’t set in too deep to be cured at this point. He’s eaten nothing but raw meat for three days and has never felt better. Lycanthropy had no cure and he was past the point where the medicines Wayne Medical made could slow the spread of the disease. Right now his goal was simple; escape before the full moon. If he could just make it out of this stupid basement and get back to Bruce he could be locked somewhere secure until the moon waned. If he was still here then Dick dreads what Slade’s planning with him. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop himself hurting anyone.

The little window that let the sunlight into the basement had another more sinister purpose; it also let in the moonlight. Dick can _feel_ the moon waxing now, tugging on him like a magnet on an iron filling. He doesn’t know if it’s the knowledge he’s running out of time or the effects of the moon itself that’s making him so restless.

He tugs at his chain and growls under his breath, only taking breaks from trying to work the anchor free from the cement to drink or relieve himself. Still no matter how deeply he’s immersed himself into a new strategy to break free he’s still listening out first and foremost for the sound of the door unlocking.

Dick braces both feet on the wall, his back arched like a bow, and the chain held with both hands so that all the weight is on a single point in the chain. He heaves, putting his whole body into it, and pulls until his arms scream with pain. Through the haze he hears the click of the door unlocking and drops to his feet.

“Slade!” He barks then catches himself, that sounded a bit too inhuman for his comfort. Even with his doubts his heart starts beating faster.

“Grayson.” Slade grunts as he shoulders his way through the door. “I’ve got dinner. Do you want chicken or pork?”

“Chicken.” Dick decides, scratching absentmindedly at his collar.

Slade tears the plastic off the meat tray and slides the tray full of drumsticks over to him. Dick immediately grabs one in each hand and tears into it.

He bites off rough chunks of the chicken, barely remembering to chew as he stuffs his face. The boredom and frustration leaves him desperate for something, anything, to take his mind off being a prisoner. He quickly tears through the easy meat, gnaws at the gristle then chews on the bones until they crack and he can suck up the marrow. He chews the bones to splinters, his training insisting they can be used for lockpicks even though the only lock here was out of his reach by several feet. Slade chuckles fondly as he watches Dick eat.

Eventually, at the point Slade is picking his teeth with the bone from his t-bone steak, Dick accepts he’s just playing with the leftover bones now. It doesn’t stop him from idly sucking a bone shard that has long since lost its flavor.

Slade stands and his attention immediately shifts to the werewolf.

“Look at you, you’re a mess.” Slade says in a rumbling growl.

Dick tenses, wondering if he’s going to get the hose again, when Slade draws in closer and looms above him. Dick’s hands ball into fists as he readies for a fight, but Slade ignores it and sits beside him.

“Come here.” He orders.

Dick considers defying him just to be defiant but Slade…He can’t tell if it’s wishful thinking or Stockholm setting in but Slade seems to be treating him nicer. He’s still strict and arrogant and it still pisses him off how he always acted like he was in control but the werewolf did have his softer side, his more caring side.

Dick shivers as Slade reaches out towards him and pulls him in against the werewolf’s chest. He hadn’t noticed it before but even in human form Slade still had that same wolf-y smell. It puts him at ease.

“There we go, there’s a good boy.” Slade says as he rests a hand on Dick’s shoulder and gently strokes it. Dick isn’t sure he likes where this is going, or if he’d be able to stop it.

Slade’s hand moves up, across his shoulder, briefly brushing his neck, before his fingers rest in Dick’s hair. Dick hadn’t as much as thought about his hair since he got here, but now he’s aware it’s a greasy, tangled mat. Slade drags his fingers through it, his fingernails are more like claws and they sweep through the mess like the teeth of a comb. The relief is immediate. Tension bleeds out of his body with every sweep of Slade’s fingers. Even though he knows its only been a few weeks it feels like it’s been months since he’d last been held.

Despite his misgivings he finds his eyes sliding closed and his breathing steadying. His body relaxes as the steady sweep of Slade’s fingers lulls him into a kind of trance. Pressed against Slade’s chest like this he can hear the steady beat of the werewolf’s heart and feel the warmth of his body around him.

It feels…safe.

When Slade pulls his hand away Dick whines, honest to goodness _whines,_ like some kind of animal. Slade smiles and pets his head like he’s a dog.

“Full moon tomorrow.” He says casually. “You must be looking forward to getting out of this basement.”

Dick recoils like he’s been stung.

No, it couldn’t be, he knew…no, he’d desperately _hoped_ he had more time, but he can feel the truth of Slade’s words in his gut. As much as he desperately hopes the disease isn’t deep enough yet he knows that when that full moon rises he’ll be forced to transform into a bloodthirsty monster like Slade.

Dick is disgusted to find he’s snarling, baring his teeth like it could possibly do something to save him.

Not only had Slade done this to him, not only was he going to become a monster like Slade was, Slade was going to unleash him on the innocent public! It was bad enough _knowing_ the moonrise was going to take the last of his humanity from him without knowing it was going to force him to kill as well.

He’d spent the last three days hoping the chain would snap and free him. Now he prayed it would hold him trapped forever.

Slade smirks at his discomfort.

“Denial won’t keep the moon from rising.” He points out snidely. “Best to just accept it. It hurts less that way.”

Dick spits on the ground to show how he feels. Even with the situation feeling so dire some hidden depth of self-preservation keeps him from spitting in Slade’s face.

Slade chuckles and leaves Dick without even the hope of escape to distract him from time’s unstoppable march towards the rise of the full moon and with it his first transformation.


	4. The change

Slade can tell he’s angry enough to leave Dick alone until he’s fighting for sleep on the concrete floor and too cold and tired to protest to the warmth of his wolf body. Dick slips into an uneasy sleep, one where he wants to be up and do something, but his tiredness keeps dragging him back into sleep.

He hadn’t thought he’d miss being woken up by Slade’s wolf tongue licking his face until he wakes up without it. It takes a while for the cold to filter through to his brain and wake him up, by the time he does Slade’s long gone and he’s lost his chance to confront him.

Dread is gnawing at the pit of his stomach so Dick does what Bruce taught him to do when the situation felt overwhelmingly bleak. He sits down, breathes deeply, and tries to meditate.

It takes a few minutes before he realizes what seemed wrong about the basement now, it’s lacking a low electronic hum. Slade’s turned the freezer off.

It doesn’t take long before he can _smell_ the meat defrosting inside it.

Thoughts of what could possibly be in there keep interrupting his attempts to gather his thoughts.

Slade was undeniably a maneater, he hunted for sport not food, true, but that didn’t mean he didn’t eat the meat once he’d made the kill. Was the corpse in there a _human_ one, some unfortunate soul Slade had judged unworthy of changing, still in the clothes they died in? Or worse, Dick knew about the terrors of the monster’s blackmarket, had the body been _butchered?_ Would he even be able to tell if it had?

_What if Slade had been feeding him human meat this whole time?!_

Enough, Dick tells himself, now you’re just being paranoid. You know that meat came in a prepacked plastic tray and no part of a person can pass for a chicken drumstick _that_ well.

Breathe in, breathe out. Focus. Ignore the meat. Think only about the facts.

Fact #1: He was chained in a basement in an unknown location that could be miles from Gotham or anyone that would be able to stop him. Getting help wasn’t an option.

Fact #2: It was a full moon tonight and, as much as it hurt he couldn’t deny it, he was a werewolf. Not transforming wasn’t an option.

Fact #3: Slade planned on unleashing him, that meant he had a way of getting him out of these chains and out of this basement. Staying locked up where he can’t hurt anyone isn’t an option.

Fact #4: If he escaped the basement early there was no guarantee he would be able to reach safety before the moon rose. It was much more likely that he’d kill anyone who tried to help him. Escape wasn’t an option, not right now, not until he has more information and can keep himself from killing.

There are more facts, but it’s these four his mind keeps sticking on. He chews them over like he's chewing a bone.

Speaking of bones...

The smell of meat doesn’t help, it just reminds him unpleasantly that there’s a part of him that doesn’t care about any of this, it just wants a bone to chew on. He has to keep that at bay by focusing on planning, but the facts keep distracting him with despair until he starts wanting meat again. His stomach is twisting with hunger, Slade hasn't left him any food, just the smell of it out of his reach.

He tugs on his chain out of habit now as he tries to figure out a way out of this. He only grows more and more frustrated when no matter how hard he thinks he can’t think of a solution. His toying with the chain gets more and more violent as frustration builds up inside him until he’s actively chewing on it. The frustration keeps building and his head hurts and he’s hungry because Slade hasn’t fed him and he can’t reach any of the meat, he just wants to sink his teeth into something.

He’s so wound up when he hears the click of the door unlocking he snarls at it. Slade enters the basement. He doesn’t have any food with him.

“SLADE!” Dick screams at him, fighting with his chains to try and break free and attack him.

Slade looks over him without a hint of fear or regret. He steps closer, closer enough that Dick’s attempts to claw him are only inches from his face.

“Sun’s down.” He says casually and for the first time Dick notices the dimming of sunlight through the little window. “’Figured I’d keep you company until moonrise.” He says then steps within reach of his prisoner.

Dick attacks.

His first punch sinks into Slade’s smug face and hits hard enough to split his lip but it doesn’t wipe the smug look off his face and heals before he can land another blow.

Slade fights back in that strange careful way of a monster with super-strength deliberate limiting himself and ending up the same strength as a regular person.

Dick doesn’t register the condescension; he’s too busy lashing out with as many punches, kicks and anything else he can get to connect. He claws and headbutts and bites and actually draws blood with it as he sinks his teeth into Slade’s arm and locks his jaw.

Slade sweeps Dick’s legs out from under him and brings his other arm up to bar his captive’s throat, holding him trapped as they fall against the wall.

Dick chews out of vindictive spite, grinding his teeth in Slade’s arm with no greater goal than causing him more pain. Slade doesn’t let up even as the blood drips down his arm.

“Good.” He grunts, his voice thicker and less human than usual. “Very good.”

Dick releases his bite enough to scream with his mouth red with blood. His entire body tenses in a sudden violent jolt as the first beam of moonlight pierces through the window. There’s a sudden electric pain through his entire body as it tries to shift and he tries to resist.

“Shhh, shhh.” Slade hisses in his ear, holding him close. He has too many teeth and they’re sharper now as the full moon rises. “Let it happen Grayson, let it happen.”

His fingers now tipped with claws instead of nails sweep through his hair. Dick screams, the sound shifting between human and animal, both in pain. He can feel his muscles swelling, his bones creaking as they lengthen, hairs digging their way through his skin. His fingernails are ripped out by sharp black claws forcing their way through them. As he screams new sharper teeth force themselves through his gums and his own blood joins Slade's in his mouth.

“Stop, stop fighting, it only hurts because you’re fighting it.” Slade grunts, his breathing sounding much deeper and heavier than a human’s. “You can’t stop it so embrace it. Let it happen!”

Dick’s screams descending in pitch as his jaw cracks and lengthens, pushing out of his face. Briefly his skin tears open as the growing bone outstrips its growth before muscles bulge outwards like red worms sprouting from the bone and new reddened skin grows out like moss to cover them. His bones audibly crack as they shift, his muscle tearing then lengthening to fit the new shape of his body.

His scream is barely human now, it drops in pitch then cuts off.

He scrabbles desperate at his neck with fingers that are how claws as his throat grows and the metal collar cuts into it. His scream stops for a second as his throat is crushed by it, then the metal snaps with the force of the change and he’s free.

The scream returns but there’s no human left in it now, his vision is dimming from many colors to two, but at the same time scents seem to be unfolding like flowers with all the new information his nose his sending to his brain. It hurts, his head is splitting, splitting…

Then he’s gone.

Something rises, something with grizzled gray fur and a deep hunger but that thing is no longer human, even in part.


	5. The Aftermath

Dick wakes up with the taste of blood in his mouth. It’s that realization that makes him open his eyes and register the rest of his situation.

He’s still naked but he’s not resting on the basement floor, he’s resting on Slade’s equally naked chest. His face is pressed against the wiry white curls of Slade’s chest hair; they’re also matted with dried blood. One of Slade’s arms is wrapped around his shoulders, holding him pressed to it. What he thought were dreams were actually memories but they still slip away like dreams when he tries to examine them. All he can remember is the feeling of running on all fours, everything else is a fading haze of senses he no longer has.

He carefully tries to raise his head enough to see where he is when a growl makes him freeze instinctively. Slade isn’t sleeping. The older werewolf snorts, shifting as he tightens his grip on Dick’s shoulder. Now his field of view isn’t taken up entirely by chest hair Dick can see they’re in a bed, but instead of the blankets being pulled over them they’ve been made into a roughly circular nest.

He hasn’t been in this room but it’s similar to a lot of rooms of Slade’s that Dick’s investigated in the past. The décor is whatever it’s been when he bought it, with weapon racks bolted straight onto the wall through the wallpaper. There’d been a taxidermized stag’s head on the wall at some point, it looked like Slade had been using its antlers as a chew toy.

“Please tell me I didn’t…” He asks with his breath rasping in his throat.

“No Grayson, we didn’t have sex. Clothes just don’t change with us.” Slade says, his voice dripping with dark sarcasm.

“ _God_ Slade, not that, tell me I didn’t hunt anyone.” Dick begs.

Slade snorts.

“ _I_ hunted, _you_ couldn’t catch a parked car, dumb puppy’s got four left paws.” He ruffles Dick’s hair fondly. “You spent all night barking at squirrels and rolling in anything you could find.” He doesn’t mention that he’d found it rather adorable that Dick would scentroll in everything then come back to show him, like he didn’t know he had a couch until Dick showed it to him. He’d been a cute puppy.

He catches Dick’s expression and sighs. He tightens his grip, pulling Dick closer to him and runs his fingers through his hair.

“Kid, I’m not dumb enough to risk your daddy finding us just to have a little human meat. Right after I bit you I hunted a deer and put it in the freezer for your first change. It takes a lot out of you when you’re not used to it, I didn’t want you going hungry. You can check the bones if you like, it’s all venison.”

After he’d changed Dick had bolted straight for the freezer, whining as he tried to get to inside it until Slade took pity and opened the lid for him. They’d gorged themselves on the meat inside together and both been sated before they left the basement.

It was a known fact that a newly changed werewolf often killed their family. It was a combination of factors that led to this; the change made you hungry, wolves and humans recognized each other in different ways so people were mistaken for strangers, and the tendency of new wolves to lash out when panicked were the main factors. It was the reason that lone wolves were more dangerous than those that had a pack to rely on to protect and guide the new wolves through the change. Even though he’d seen Slade in wolf form before Dick didn’t recognize him after the change. Wolves and humans perceived the world different and it was smell rather than sight that guided them and his sense of smell was entirely different now. To expect Dick to recognize him would be like expecting a blind person suddenly given sight to recognize someone because they knew what their face felt like. All Dick had known was that there was an older wolf here who knew what he was doing so he’d followed with his tail wagging.

The first change took you differently depending on what kind of person you were. Slade was ready for a dominance fight if it came to it but the new puppy was too curious for that. He wanted to sniff everything and run around and roll over on his back to play. Slade wouldn’t admit it but when Dick had nipped at him, Slade had embarrassed himself indulging in a little playtime. There was no-one else there to see him jumping around like a puppy and laugh at him.

Slade had also spent an instructive hour teaching him to howl properly, the pathetic little ‘owowo’ he’d made when trying reminded the older werewolf of the first changes of his pups. It was adorable but he still had a long way to go before Slade was comfortable letting him out on a hunt, let alone a human hunt.

Werewolves didn’t often hunt humans; for speed a fox or a rabbit was far faster a quarry, if they wanted a challenge a stag or a boar was more fun to fight. When all was said and done a human just didn’t have enough meat on them to be worth the trouble of hunting them and getting away with it. A human hunt was something to be savored, the hunting ground carefully prepared and the prey carefully chosen. Werewolves very rarely killed at random, but a grudge was something they _loved_ working out in the hunt.

He wasn’t going to waste the kid’s first hunt on whoever he could find. That kill was something he wanted to savor.

Dick shifts in his arms. He looks uncomfortable, like he can’t decide whether he likes the taste of blood in his mouth. Slade grabs the water bottle he’s been keeping on the bedside table and hands it to him. Dick grabs the bottle from him and gratefully gulps it down. He gets halfway through it before his fingers stiffen and the bottle drops from his fingers.

“…Poison…” He croaks as his body freezes.

“’Don’t worry’” Slade quotes, throwing Dick’s words back at him “’It’ll wear off soon.’”

Betrayal shines in Dick’s eyes when he realizes Slade has poisoned him with his own Wolfbane. Slade picks up his frozen body and carries him to the basement. He grabs another one of the chains and a welding torch.

“Why…?” Dick weakly croaks, the Wolfbane has frozen his body but his mind is still there.

Slade has to give the kid credit, he knew how to mix a good Wolfbane pill. Raiding his monster hunting kit had some use. He reaches out one hand and strokes the former monster hunter’s cheek, twirling a lock of dark hair between his fingers.

“You can get out of this any time you want, Grayson. You just have to accept yourself and learn to shift without the moon forcing you to.” He looks at the remaining chains. “If not, well, I’ve got another four months before I have to buy more chains.” He gives Dick’s cheek a final pat. “I have faith you’ll learn before then.” He says.

Then Slade picks up the welding torch and starts to weld the new collar shut across Dick’s neck.


	6. The Talk

So here he is, back in the basement again, still chained to the wall, still a prisoner of the werewolf who infected him but now things were different.

Now he had a plan.

Admittedly it was the same plan as before; escape the basement, find Bruce and hope he can help, but now he had something he didn’t have. He knows how he’s going to do it. He just has to learn how to shift enough to break the collar, then he can make a run for it.

He ignores the little part of himself that tells him he’d just be trading Slade’s basement for Bruce’s. There was no cure for lycanthropy and no way to stop himself from changing. The best they could do would be to lock him up every full moon, just like he was now. Dick tells himself its still better than whatever Slade’s planning and tries to focus.

Unsurprisingly Bruce’s monster hunting training didn’t include how to turn into a monster. He’d been taught how _not_ to turn into a monster which hadn’t helped at all when the full moon rose. He tries to focus on that uncontrollable anger he’d felt and the overwhelming fear and pain as his body twisted out of his control. He can remember that feeling but trying to hold in in his mind is like trying to hold a hot coal. Every part of him wants to avoid that pain again. Whenever he felt he was getting closer to it he flinches back.

He doesn’t want to be a monster. He doesn’t want waking up naked and covered in blood to be his life now. He doesn’t want to spend every night dreading the rise of the full moon and knowing there’s nothing he can do to stop it.

His stomach growls and he wants meat.

Immediately afterwards he hates himself for it.

He’s only been here for a few weeks and already he’s been reduced to nothing more than a drooling dog on a leash, just another dumb animal looking forward to its next meal.

“Wow.” An unfamiliar voice says. He didn’t even hear the door open. “He’s right, you really are just moping.”

Dick bares his teeth without thinking and the visitor bares hers back.

She’s a female werewolf, definitely a female werewolf. She’s in that loose mostly human state werewolves liked to use when they were socializing among their own kind. The look was mostly human but the eyes were brighter, the nails were more like claws and the teeth became fangs. The silver-white hair she was wearing long extended further down her cheeks. If she took her shirt off the silver hair would extend all the way down her back. She didn’t have a tail but that was a choice.

While experienced werewolves could blend aspects of wolf and man to any proportion they pleased, Bruce had taught him that monster hunters had developed four main categories of forms. The first two were obvious, full wolf and full human. You had to use behavioral clues to pick up that they were anything other than what they seemed. The other two forms were more obvious, if they were leaning into their wolf side they picked the hybrid form with its bulk and use of the wolf’s senses as well as fangs and claws. If they wanted to be mostly human but with some supernatural perks they’d be in what Bruce called Enhanced Human but what Dick called Wolfman form after the universal monster movie.

She’s pretty enough and younger than him but Dick recognizes that silver hair and he’s not expecting mercy from a werewolf blood relative of Slade’s. Immediately his eyes slide off her and towards the packet of pork ribs she’s holding. His stomach growls and he growls too.

“That’s the spirit.” The wolfman, or rather wolfwoman, tells him.

She slides the pack of ribs across the floor.

Dick tears the plastic off it, trying not to snatch. He finds himself hunching over his food, trying to protect it from being stolen, and stops himself. He tries to sit upright and eat like a normal person.

That’s when he remembers he’s still naked.

He goes bright red and drops the ribs as he tries to cover his crotch with the meat tray. The wolfwoman gives him a look that says she might not have been checking out his junk before he drew attention to it, but she is now. She grins.

“No wonder Daddy likes you, pretty boy.” She says playfully.

“Daddy…likes me?” Dick repeats with a look of confusion.

The wolfwoman rolls her eyes.

“Yes, Slade is my father.”

“No I got that.” Dick says. “But…he likes me?”

“Well duh.” The wolfwoman says, reaching up and tapping the side of her neck.

Dick raises his hand to the same spot and feels the scar tissue under his fingertips.

“He bit me…because he likes me.” He says out loud.

“Wow you hunters really don’t know anything about us except how to kill us.” The wolfwoman scoffs. “If he wanted to change you he could have bit you anywhere. A neck bite like that’s a claiming mark. It’s as good as a wedding ring to werewolves, it means you are strictly off limits. No other pack would take you in with a mark like that, every werewolf knows it means you're his.”

Dick is too stunned to reply.

He’d genuinely thought Slade bit him because the werewolf hated him. True, Slade was notoriously difficult to predict but the more humanlike monsters were like that. They looked human but their thought patterns were entirely alien. Slade hadn’t been subtle in his belief that werewolves were a superior species.

He’s not sure what he thought. That the bite was Slade’s way of forcing him to recognize his greatness maybe, or that it was punishment for daring to hunt him. After all being turned into a monster couldn’t be anything but a curse.

That it was Slade’s way of proposing to him hadn’t been considered.

The astounding arrogance and cruelty of it overwhelms him for a moment, as does the creeping dread of knowing this torment he’s been put through is _Slade's idea of nice._

“I’m Rose by the way.” The wolfwoman adds, shocking Dick out of his moment of horror.

“Hi Rose, I’m Dick.” He introduces himself properly, extending one hand for a shake.

Rose sniffs it carefully, Dick guesses that’s what passes for a formal greeting in werewolves.

“Nice to meet you.” Dick adds.

“Likewise.” Rose replies then grins at him. “So was your daddy really raised by bats?”

“What? No! He was trained by vampires that’s why he wears the cape…How could bats possibly raise a person?” Dick splutters.

“I don’t know, it’s not like I’ve ever got the chance to ask a monster hunter in person.” Rose rolls her eyes. “Daddy asked me to teach you how to shift but when else am I going to get to talk to a hunter without…” She mimes her throat being cut with one hand. With the other she swipes the ribs and takes a bite.

Dick forces down the part of him that wants to yelp in protest at this. It’s just meat and Slade wouldn’t let him starve, due to their enhanced healing it took months to starve a werewolf anyway. Rose sees this and grimaces.

“See, that’s your problem.” Rose scoffs and tosses the ribs back to him. “I was going to eat those to tease you but you’re not even going to protect your food, that’s too pathetic to be funny.”

She sits down with her legs crossed.

“But I think I see the problem now. You think being a werewolf is going to make you into a monster, like it’s some sort of curse.”

“Of course it is!” Dick blurts out.

“Have you ever thought about what Slade was like before he was a werewolf?” Rose asks him.

He hadn’t.

“Becoming a werewolf didn’t make him a monster, he was always like that.” Rose explains. “Lycanthropy just makes him better at it. He didn’t pick you because you’re pretty. You’re a _hunter_ dumbass, that’s halfway to a werewolf anyway. He just figured being a werewolf would make you better at hunting.”

“I’m a _monster_ hunter.” Dick tries to argue.

“That doesn’t matter. You’re another hunter hunting the same prey in his territory, inviting him to hunt with you, bringing him prey, helping defend his territory. That’s flirting for werewolves.”

Dick is speechless.

Sure there were times when there was a threat too great to handle alone when the only option was to get supernatural help but that didn’t mean…it didn’t happen often…Now that he’s counting it happened more often than he thought.

“I’m surprised you didn’t smell it on him.” Rose wrinkles her nose. “Though I guess you don’t know what he smells like when he’s not ‘interested.’”

“That…honestly explains a lot.” Dick says carefully. He’s not sure if he’s more horrified or weirded out.

He wasn’t trying to flirt, it was just that Slade was always there and eager to help. He’d thought it was just because the werewolf hated other monsters muscling in on his territory but now Dick sees his eagerness in another light. He’d called on Slade nearly as much as he called on Bruce and sure he’d stroked the werewolf’s ego to get him to help but that had just been him trying to be manipulative not…that.

He’s not sure that explaining to Slade he was just being ruthless and manipulative would do anything to _discourage_ his feelings. Slade would probably just think it was more romantic.

Christ, Slade really did think that turning him into a monster was giving him a _gift._

Most guys would have given flowers, Dick thinks, then immediately has to bite his tongue at the thought of Slade in a tuxedo thrusting a bunch of roses towards him and growling at him to take them. No, Dick couldn’t picture Slade trying to romance him the normal way, this whole kidnapping and transformation thing would be how Slade showed affection. Why have flowers when you could have running over the rooftops at midnight, hunting a horror that was learning for the first time what it was to be prey?

“Look, I didn’t come here to help you flirt with Daddy.” Rose interrupts his musings. “We’re supposed to be practicing shifting.”

Dick winces.

“Sorry, It’s been a while since I’ve had someone to talk to, I’m out of practice.”

“Okay just, try to pay attention because I’ve got lots of questions.”

They talk until night falls and a howl from above sends Rose scurrying back to her father. Dick ends up learning more about werewolves than any monster hunter knew. One thing he learnt was that young werewolves didn’t transform until they hit puberty and that Slade had coached Rose in shifting the same as Rose was coaching him.

The other, more important thing he learns and that Slade wouldn’t want him to know is that it was possible to be a werewolf and still be part of human society. Slade called them dogs, and thought they were werewolves that gave up on their natural wolfishness to try and placate ungrateful prey that would slay them as soon as the act faltered but still, it was a hope.

He had to have hope.


	7. The Confrontation

Not soon after Rose left Slade’s wolf form padded down the stairs and waited next to him for him to lie down.

Dick feels awkward. Confronting Slade over his feelings for him while he was chained up in the basement was going to be bad enough without feeling like he was talking to a dog.

“Slade, I…” He starts to say and the wolf snorts to cut him off. “Look, Rose told me…” This time Slade growls, circles a patch of the basement floor, then flops over with a final snort.

Dick sighs and decides if Slade’s going to be difficult he’s going to get petty too.

He reaches a hand towards Slade. The wolf’s ear twitches and his eye swivels around to focus on it. Slade’s lip raises to show a half-hearted flash of fang. Dick decides he doesn’t care if Slade bites him, it’s not like he can turn into a double-werewolf. and strokes the wolf between the ears.

Slade makes an unhappy whining sound but he doesn’t bite off Dick’s hand like he could.

“You are ridiculous.” Dick tells him as he pets the wolf like he’s a dog.

Slade snorts but his tail has started slowly wagging. Dick drags his fingers through the thick grizzled gray fur, from the wolf’s head down to the base of his tail. The wolf grumbles but doesn’t do anything until Dick tries rubbing his belly. The grumbling grows into something nearing a growl before the wolf rolls over and lets him stroke the lighter fur of his underbelly.

“You’re not so bad when you’re like this.” Dick tells him.

The wolf snorts and yawns wide, licking his lips before wriggling on his back pointedly and ducking in his forepaws a few times. Dick sighs but takes the hint and lies down with the wolf. The wolf snorts and flops over in a different position so he’s covering Dick’s body.

Dick snuggles into the wolf’s thick fluffy fur as he tries to think of what to say. Maybe it’s just his brain connecting two things that weren’t really connected but he doesn’t want to reject Slade for the same reasons he would have before he was bitten. Saying it wouldn’t work because Slade’s a monster and he’s a monster hunter seemed too hollow now he was a werewolf too.

How did you turn down someone who thought chaining you up in his basement was an appropriate romantic gesture? The longer he thought about it, the harder it became to know what to say.

The wolf starts to snore before he works out what to say and Dick slips into an uneasy sleep. His dreams are haunted by flashes of light and darkness in which he tries to speak but the moonlight is on him and his jaw keeps shifting and mangling his words.

He’s woken up in the way he’s become accustomed to, with a wolf licking his face until he’s awake enough to push him away. The wolf snorts, stands and makes to go back up the stairs to get breakfast.

“Slade, wait.” Dick blurts out, roiling over himself to get a good look at him. “We need to talk.”

The wolf pauses partway up the stairs and looks down on him, then from him to the chain and turns back towards the door.

“No it’s not…” Dick tugs on the chain out of habit, making the links of it clink. “Nothing to do this, pinky promise.”

Slade snorts and for a moment Dick is sure he’s going to leave anyway when the wolf pads over to him and looms over him with a look that says ‘this better be good.’

Under pressure he resorts to humor.

“You know you don’t have to be in wolf form if you want to cuddle.” Dick teases.

Slade shifts. He makes it look as easy as rocking back on his heels, the wolf merely rears up on his hindlegs and is a biped before he can blink. The fur quickly shrinks back under the skin and, oh, he’d forgotten that werewolves didn’t shift clothes.

Dick feels a blush building. He was used to seeing Slade in his Ikon suit, that garment was designed to shift with him, even if it did make his wolf form look like a dog in a Halloween costume. He hadn’t really thought about how Slade in wolf form technically was naked all the time until he was staring down a naked Slade in _human_ form.

Credit where he was due, Slade was in great shape. Scars crisscrossed his muscles, which Dick could only see as impressive considering the limited amount of thing capable of permanently injuring a werewolf.

“This better?” Slade replies drily.

Maybe it’s the change or maybe it’s knowing Slade had feelings for him, but while Dick-of-the-past would have called his tone arrogant Dick-right-now thinks it seems more…playful. All those little habits that annoyed him so much as a hunter were still there, but now he was realizing that to werewolves Slade acted like a pack leader.

“Well now I don’t feel like a crazy old lady talking to a pet.” Dick says as he tries not to stare.

Slade smirks and draws closer so there’s nowhere Dick can look that isn’t him.

“I told Rose I didn’t need any help in the romance department.” Slade growls. “Either you realize it yourself, or you don’t.”

“Waiting for Stockholm syndrome to kick in?” Dick snaps back, pulling at the chain. “You think I’m just going to come around like this is some kind of extra fucked up Beauty and the Beast?”

“I _don’t_ need nor want to force someone to have feelings for me like I’m training a pet.” Slade growls, his voice growing dark. “That’s an easy, flimsy, play-pretend kinda love and I’m perfectly capable of hiring prostitutes if all I want’s a fuck.”

Slade’s voice softens and he reaches out to stroke Dick’s cheek. Dick leans into the touch and Slade gives him a scratch behind the ears.

“Kid, I didn’t turn you because I thought it would make you mine. I turned you because you’re a fighter, always have been and always will be. You’re stronger than this, I know you are.”

“Take the chain off.” Dick pleads.

Slade sighs.

“You really think the chain’s for _me_? I’d have no problem keeping a puppy like you in line. I could have cut you free easily, let you transform for your first time surrounded by friends and family, hunted you down afterwards and brought you to heel but you’d never forgive yourself for it. The chain’s for _you._ It stays until you learn how to control yourself.”

He stands.

“Like it or not I have faith in you. You’ve overcome a coven of witches, you can overcome this. I’m getting breakfast. Practice.”

Dick watches him leave and takes a moment to think about what Rose said. He’s given up on clinging to his humanity but he doesn’t have to become a monster. He can learn to control this curse and make it work for him, the same way Bruce took the training the Al Ghul vampire clan gave to their thralls and turned it against the forces of darkness.

The trick to learning to control the transformation was to try not to transform all at once. The best that could happen is you’d do it and not remember how to in the confusion of the change.

He focuses on his hand and tries to grow his fingernails by thinking about how he needs them to be longer and stronger.

He’s not sure if it’s working or if he’s imagining it but when Slade returns with bacon and eggs (both raw and served in a bowl but he’d eaten plenty of raw eggs before Slade turned him) it feels like a reward.


	8. The Hero

An unexpected sound breaks Dick’s concentration.

He’s gotten used to the sounds Slade normally made in the house up above, which was very little. Sometimes he thought there was more than one person there but if there was they were undoubtedly other werewolves and not likely to help.

Not once since he first woke up in the basement had he heard a car drive by or a child laugh or anything that might tempt him to call for help. Wherever this place was it was isolated. If Dick had to guess he’d say Slade had found a place in a part of town that had been abandoned after one devastating monster attack or another and made it into a safe house. Rumors about the danger still lurking would keep the humans away and let the monsters move into the abandoned properties the same way a hermit crab changed its shell.

Bruce hated the little suburb nicknamed ‘Monstertown’ not for the few residents, who were often halfmonsters not so lucky as a dhampir to look human, but for what they represented. Here was a place where humanity had failed, and the darkness had won.

There’s an argument going on upstairs, loud enough for Dick to hear it through the closed door. He recognizes the growls of Slade being angry but there’s another werewolf there too whose growls he doesn’t recognize.

He ends up on the end of his chain, literally, straining to try and reach the door as he tries to strain his ears to overhear what’s happening. The words don’t carry as much as the growls and sounds of doors being slammed and walls being punched. He makes out ‘the howl’, ‘trying to be normal’ on the part of the other werewolf and ‘my damn son’, ‘didn’t raise you to be a goddamn dog, and ‘just trying to protect you’ from Slade before the door slams open.

Dick scrambles back against the wall and bares his teeth nervously.

The young man standing silhouetted in the light doesn’t look like a werewolf like Rose had, he doesn’t even look like a hunter. He looks like a normal person except the scar across his throat. He’d been wearing a scarf over it but it hangs open now.

The man’s green gray eyes focus on him and Dick shrinks back against the wall, not knowing whether to warn him to stay back or be afraid of him.

“What has he done now?” The man seems to whisper in horror and steps closer.

Dick bares his teeth on instinct at the approach of a stranger. This doesn’t stop him and Dick forces himself to relax rather than bite.

“I am so sorry, I didn’t know.” The man says and Dick realizes what is wrong. He’s opening his mouth and moving his lips and words are coming out but he’s not speaking. The words are being projected magically into the air instead.

That scar, his vocal chords have been cut, but werewolves were supernatural creatures. They had the ability to use magic. Dick finds he’s baring his teeth again and he growls when the stranger touches the chain.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m setting you free.” The stranger says.

“I don’t know how to control it, I’m dangerous.” Dick protests.

The look that crosses the strangers face makes him shudder. It’s the look of anger that burns cold and even though it isn’t directed at him he’s still chilled by being so close to it.

A sharp sound makes Dick’s head snap towards it before he registers what it is. Slade is growling, the kind of growl that ended with him tearing someone’s throat out with his teeth. Claws that could no longer be called fingernails cut chunks from the doorway as he grips it.

“Joeyyy…” Slade growls. “Get away frrrom himmm.”

The stranger, Joey if Dicks hearing the name under the growling right, turns and growls back at Slade.

“I hoped you were howling because you actually wanted to see your family.” He snaps. “When Rose said you invited her over to play with a new puppy I actually dared to hope she was talking about an actual dog.”

“He is a dog, right now at least.” Slade snorts.

Dick raises a lip in a silent snarl at that.

“I thought you wanted a normal life.” Slade puts the name venom into the last two words that a normal person would put into the words ‘child murderer’. “Curled up with your human owner like a pet, pretending you don’t have my blood in you like you were never part of my pack..”

“He’s not my owner, he’s my _boyfriend._ ” Joey bites back, moving into what was, for werewolves, attack position.

“He’s prey.” Slade growls back. He’s barely human now, every second pushes him further from the wolfman towards the hybrid. “Bite him or leave him, he’s holding you back.”

“Is that why _he’s_ here?” Joey’s gaze flickers back to Dick.

His hackles raise as his golden hair extended down the back of his neck. The fingers holding the chain suddenly grow claws. In a flash his eyes are suddenly inhumanly green and nearly glowing as he raises a hand to break the chain, then in another flash of silver fur Slade leaps at him.

Dick presses himself against the wall to try and avoid being gutted by accident. He’d heal but those claws still hurt. Real wolves wore down their claws with running but werewolves never stayed in one form for long and regenerated too quickly to wear them down. A stray swipe from Slade’s super strength gouges inch deep scratches into the concrete.

Werewolves fought each other in an ever-shifting ball of fur and claw, where each strove to find themselves in the position where fang beat flesh and hand beat paw. Both are healing between blows but it’s clear, Joey’s losing.

Under the twisted snarls from ever changing jaws is the pathetic whining cry of a worried dog. Dick realizes it’s coming from him.

Joey is slammed against the wall and pulls himself up. He’s half human, the left half, with a human hand holding together the gash on his furred right shoulder so it heals faster. Slade bares his bloody teeth, keeping his body between Joey and Dick.

“You know this is wrong.” Joey pants but it doesn’t disrupt his words. “Let him go and I won’t have to get the hunters involved.”

“And lose your normal life?” Slade growls with something approaching a smile. “Go ahead, let the hunters know how you know this. They’ll hunt you the same as any other monster.”

For a second a hunted look flickers over Joey’s face, then he looks Slade dead in the eyes and the blond werewolf slumps to the ground as if asleep. Slade stands still as a statue, still looking at the spot in the wall where Joey’s face had been. His body shudders as if fighting with itself then turns towards Dick.

The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Instead of the normal icy blue Slade’s eye is shining green. Slade’s claw slams down and the chain links shatter.

“Run!” He growls in as voice that is not quite his own and Dick does.


	9. The Escape

Dick leaps over Joey’s body, up the stairs and through the doorway. He doesn’t take the time to register anything about the house itself, he doesn’t even bother trying to find the door, he just leaps through the first window he sees and crashes through it.

He rolls as he hits the ground, ignoring the shards of glass stuck in him as he runs. Muscle memory forces his body to move even as his brain is lagging behind.

He finds himself looking up at the surrounding houses as he scrambles up a fence, expecting for the noise to attract attention from the neighbors. The top of the wooden fence crumbles under his fingers with rot and the drainpipe he grabs to steady himself parts from the wall with the familiar groan of rusty metal. He reminds himself that none of these houses have people in them, no-one to call for help but also no-one to get hurt by accident. Anyone that did want to stand in would be standing between him and Slade and that wasn’t a good place to be.

Dick tells himself that he’s going to come back for Joey, he’ll find Bruce and Bruce will save him from Slade. He’s aware he does this because he’s just now feeling guilt about leaving his savior to die. Whatever the other werewolf had done, he’d done _something_ to Slade to get him to let him go, but Dick didn’t know how long it would last. Whatever Joey’s relation to Slade was like, Dick doesn’t think Slade would kill him over this. Still, part of him doubts either would still be there after he leads Bruce back to the house. Maybe disappearing would be the easier alternative to trying to persuade Bruce to let a werewolf go.

He’s getting back in the flow of running through a city. The unexpected exercise after so long chained to a wall hurts but adrenaline is carrying him through it. He ducks and weaves, vaulting fences, slipping between overgrown hedges and sliding over the rooftops of long gone cars. With a few hours he could probably Frankenstein himself a working vehicle but Dick knows he doesn’t have the time. Slade will be catching up. He pants for breath in the shade of an oak tree and keeps his eyes fixed on the horizon. The memory of the chase that ended in him being bitten keeps rising to the front of his mind.

This feels like a chance to do it over. This time he’s going to win. He just has to make it a little bit further…

The howl cuts through the air like a police siren and Dick bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood to keep himself from howling back. Slade’s calling him; that howl was the one that called all separated members of the Pack to reunite with him after a battle. The wolf in him aches to run back to him. Dick forces that feeling down. He tells himself that Slade held him prisoner and he doesn’t have to go running back to him like he’s scolding a puppy. It doesn’t help, the howl leaves him with an aching empty feeling in his chest.

He forces himself to keep going, setting his sights on the hazy but still distinct shape of Wayne Tower in the fog of pollution. He just has..He just has to get there.

The howl cuts into him again, sharper this time as he hears Slade's genuine desperation in it and this time he doesn’t bite his tongue in time. He starts to howl back without thinking, to reassure his pack leader he’s okay. He manages to cut himself off midhowl when he realizes what he’s done but Slade’s howl cuts off too. Now he knows where Dick is and Dick knows Slade’s coming for him.

He runs harder out of desperation, knowing his only chance is if he can get out of here before Slade catches up. His muscles are burning, the skin of his feet tearing as he forces himself past his limits on the worn tarmac. He’s panting hard for breath and part of him _demands_ he throws himself forwards and run on all fours. His legs ache as they can’t decide what shape they should be. His nails start to grow for extra grip on the ground, he finds himself jumping higher, running faster and sweeping aside obstacles with increased strength. An overgrown hedge blocks his path, when he swipes at it out of instinct his claws tear through the branches. One catches around his shoulder and he snaps it between his fangs. He scrambles through the leaves as he catches another howl.

That was the howl of a werewolf on the hunt. Fear spikes through his and his body can’t decide what shape it should be. He keeps running on momentum, his body shaking as it changes from four legs to two and back between steps, one moment his hand is a hand, the next its trying to become a paw and ending up a doughty lump of flesh too clumsy to grab anything and too tender to be used as a foot. His legs ache as they try to bow while also holding upright enough to scramble over a fence. He can’t run any more, he can’t control himself and the twisting misshapen thing drags itself under a rotting wooden deck to hide. He slips into the darkness and curls up, just trying to still the fear making his heart race.

He doesn’t know how long he spends there, he just knows he’s scared and he needs to hide somewhere safe. He tenses when he hears the sound of feet on the tarmac and a deep sniff. He curls up tighter, tucking his tail between his legs, and just hopes the danger passes. There’s another sniff, louder, deeper…closer, then a cracking sound and a stab of light. He curls himself up as tight as he can with a puppy’s whimper as the rotten wood splinters under the claws of the werewolf hybrid ripping it away. There’s a short sniff, a snarl and the werewolf’s arms are closing around him and lifting him up.

Dick whines and rolls over. He desperately licks at the werewolf's neck and mouth in apology. The werewolf snorts and licks him back, cleaning the grime and blood off him with his tongue to calm him down. Dick curls up in his arms, resting against the werewolf’s chest and closes his eyes as he’s carried back to the safe darkness of the den.


	10. The Walk

“Grayson.”

Dick looks up at him and cocks his head to the side.

“Grayson you can’t stay like this.”

The wolf pads over to him and rolls over onto his back with a grin. Slade glares at him and doesn’t pet his belly like the wolf wants.

“I know you can understand me.” Slade tells him. “You can’t run away from your problems like this Grayson, you have to confront them.”

The wolf whines and gives him puppy dog eyes.

“You’re very cute but I’m not going to indulge you in this. Change back. Now.” Slade orders.

Dick licks his lips and wriggles on his back.

“Awww cute puppy~!” Rose coos as she comes in with food.

Dick immediately rolls back over and runs to her with his tail wagging. He leaps up around her feet with short excited barks.

“No, down.” Rose says, putting a hand on Dick’s head. He sits and she gives him a scratch behind the ears. “Good boy.”

“You shouldn’t encourage him like that.” Slade snorts.

“I don’t know, he’s just being a puppy.” Rose says and hands down the ham-on-the-bone. It takes a few tries but eventually Dick gets a grip on it and carries back to his bed to chew on.

After the first few days of Dick refusing to shift back from wolf form Slade caved and bought him a dog bed. He couldn’t chain a wolf to the wall, it would defeat the purpose of the exercise, and Dick was happier in the basement than in the house.

“Maybe he’s stuck.” Rose suggests and settles down to eat her own lunch.

“Getting stuck is a myth.” Slade frowns. “He just doesn’t want to change back.”

Dick growls to himself as he chews at his meat, his tail gently wagging with contentment. He’d die rather than admit it but Slade blames himself for this. He’d put too much pressure on the boy, he’d put him into a stressful situation and given him no easy way out. He should have foreseen that the kid would choose to delay the consequences indefinitely. Joey…He loved his boy dearly, but he’d just made things worse for them both. Dick will never learn how to control the change like this. His dream of being a Pack again will have to wait. First he’s going to see if he can somehow convince Dick Grayson he wants to turn human again.

“Grayson.” Slade sighs. The wolf’s ear twitches, he recognizes his name still. “Grayson, I promise you’re not in trouble. I know you only ran because you were scared, I don’t blame you for it. I am _begging_ you, please, come back to me.”

The wolf pauses chewing on the ham and picks it up in his jaws. He pads over to Slade, puts the ham down at his feet and nudges it over to him with his eyes wide then lies down on his stomach and waits.

“Awww.” Rose coos as Slade hangs his head and tries not to succumb to despair. She moves over to put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about, he obviously cares about you. He’ll turn back when he feels ready.”

“This…was not the plan.” Slade says out loud which is the closest he’s going to get to admitting failure. “We were so _close_ then Joey…”

“Joey’s just jealous there’s a new puppy.” Rose reminds him. “Guess he’s worried you only have so much love to go around.”

Slade thinks Rose’s probably more right than she thinks she is. He hasn’t been the best father to his Pack, he’d tried some ways towards fixing it with her but Joey…Joey remembered the old him too caught up in the hunt to worry about the pups.

Slade had been turned by Addie as part of a military project, trying to use werewolves as super soldiers and he’d gotten addicted to the hunt. So addicted that after the program was cancelled and he was retired he found mercenary work to give him that thrill of hunting humans again. He’d become the kind of monster the monster hunters could track down and they weren’t all caution and second chances like Dick. Some, like the Jackal, didn’t care that you couldn’t tell if kids were werewolves until they got old enough for their first shift.

It had been a silver knife that had slit Joey’s throat. For how young he’d been it didn’t have to be, and Slade, drunk on blood and his own feelings of power, had gotten so used to humans being his prey he’d forgotten they could still hurt him and they didn’t need a silver knife to do it.

Joey, despite his reputation, is pragmatic. Sometimes Slade thinks his flights of heroism are a way of reminding the world that in the moment he needed a hero he had no-one. Slade wishes he could bring him into the Pack fresh, try again and this time do it better, but he can’t undo the past. He’s tried extensively and not just for Joey. Still, when he’d howled for his Pack…Joey came. He’d just need a little time to get used to the new normal.

“New plan.” He announces as he goes through the bag of assorted pet supplies.

You couldn’t live on them but things like pig’s ears and beef knuckles made for good treats and something to chew on to keep your teeth clean. He bought some for Dick to use as bribes. Rose, being Rose, had snuck a few toys into the shopping cart as well. He’s tried to avoid showing them to Dick, as cute as a curious puppy was he doesn’t want to encourage him to stay like this.

He gets out the collar.

Immediately Dick’s ears go back and he bares his teeth.

“No, stop that.” Slade tells him as he steps closer.

Dick growls. Slade growls back louder. Dick’s growl cut off into a whine and he breaks eye contact. He lies down and makes pathetic apology whines as Slade approaches. The whines turn to yelps of terror when Slade grabs him. The wolf thrashes in his arms as he tries to get away. If Slade was a human the wolf would win, but he wasn’t so it merely takes an added element of wolf strength on Slade’s part to keep hold of him.

“Grayson.” He grunts, trying to hold the wolf still. “Dick, stop struggling.”

The wolf bites him, hard. Blood runs from where the fangs pierce flesh. Slade grunts and uses the position to hold the wolf’s head still enough to snap the collar shut around it. He lets go and the wolf spring back from him. Dick growls, his sleek silvery fur standing on end as he backs against the wall. He licks the blood from his lips (Slade is already healing) and alternates snarling and trying to nibble at his collar.

“Why do you have to be so difficult?” Slade sighs, wiping the blood clean of his now healed arm.

The wolf tries and fails to get enough of his mouth around the collar to bite it off and whines at him.

“No, the collar stays.” Slade tells him.

The wolf walks around in a tight circle, looking down and woofing under his breath. He raises his paws deliberately high, pausing every few steps to sniff at his feet until he makes his way to the bottom of the basement steps. He jumps onto the bottom step and sits on it with his tail wagging, looking smugly down at Slade.

“Yes, it’s not attached to the wall, you’re very smart.” Slade tells him.

The wolf sits and scratches at his collar. The tip of his tongue sticks out.

Slade stands, patting the wolf’s side as he steps over him and heads up the stairs. He holds the leash in his other hand. Dick stands, looking up at his back as he follows Slade up the stairs.

When he gets to the top stair he pauses and whines in apprehension as he stares out through the open door to the house beyond. He turns to look back down at Rose, not sure if he’s allowed past the steps. She waves him on and the wolf turns and looks up at Slade.

Slade gets down on his knees and reaches a hand out towards him. Dick closes the distance immediately with his tail wagging. He rests his paws against Slade’s chest and licks at his neck and face.

“There, there’s a good boy.” Slade says softly. “I’ll be right here beside you, okay? Nothing bad’s going to happen to you.”

Dick wags his tail in agreement and lets Slade clip the leash onto his collar.

“Come on pup, let’s go for a walk.” Slade tells him and stands.

The wolf follows at his side, alternating looking up at him for guidance and looking around the house. He hesitates for a moment at the open front door, then Slade steps out and he steps out with him. It’s a nice day today, the sun’s shining brightly and there’s a humming of bees in the overgrown gardens and twittering of birds in the trees.

He starts to walk, keeping the pace up enough to keep Dick from getting distracted while also giving him time to look around the neighborhood now he’s not fleeing through it.

Maybe it’s just the wolf in him but he thinks the overgrowth adds a lot to the character of the neighborhood. Trees to climb, bushes to hide in, plenty of squirrels for the kids to practice hunting. If he had a choice he would have staked the kid out in the front yard and let him acclimatize in nature.

Sadly his father prevented that, the Bat was a shrewd bastard and these days they made cameras small enough to fly. Losing his puppy to a simple aerial sweep by a drone wasn’t worth the risk. He’d cleaned up the scene of the bite and let some cross contamination he’d prepared earlier. Last he checked the Bat was still hunting Waylon through the sewers and if the croc _had_ gotten his boy there’s no reason for the Bat to expect a body. It’d be a waste of good food.

He leans down and gives Dick a pat.

Still he should have found a way to do this earlier. The wolf looks much happier and healthier in the sunshine. He’s miscalculated; where the Bat Clan did prefer working in the dark cramped spaces Dick…needed a bit more room to breathe.

Inwardly Slade sets a reminder to himself to walk the dog more often. It was something he was planning on bringing in more slowly, teaching the kid where their territory was and how to mark it, but this looked like it was doing him good.

Slowly as the wolf gets used to the leash he relaxes, still stealing looks up at Slade but mostly taking time to look around and enjoy the day. He starts tugging at the lead every now and then to show Slade something new he’s found. Each time he does Slade shows he acknowledges the thing and gives him a pat.

Dick points out to him an overgrown hedge, a rusty car, a squirrel up a tree and a feral cat before he freezes in place. Slade stops walking rather than tug the leash to see what wrong with him. The wolf’s fur bristles sharply and he retches. Slade drops the leash and kneels beside him. He clicks his tongue soothingly as he runs his fingers through the wolf’s fur.

“It’s okay Dick.” He softly tells the wolf as he holds him. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

The wolf huffs out a pained breath and gives a short sad howl. The fur under Slade’s fingers stiffens and begins to recede into skin. The fur off his head darkens and becomes softer and longer as it grows, the ears shrink and reposition, and the sharp fangs of the wolf shrink into the blunter teeth of a human. Dark claws shrink into fingernails as the silver-grey fades from the now bare human skin. Just like that’s there’s no longer a wolf, instead it’s a shivering naked human man in a collar on the sidewalk with him.

Dick is curled up into a tight ball with his teeth clenched tight. Slade gathers him up in his arms and holds him tight.

“There, there, there we go, I’m here.” Slade rumbles as he reassuringly strokes his fingers through Dick’s hair. “It’s okay, everything is okay.”

Dick lets himself be picked up but as soon as Slade settles the boy in his arms Dick’s arms lash out and curl around his shoulders. He makes a sound that’s half a whine but from a human throat. Slade shushes him.

“You don’t have to apologize, I’m not angry at you.” Slade tells him. “I was worried. Too long as a wolf isn’t good for you. Leave it too long and you forget how to act human.”

Dick nuzzles against his neck and gives it a lick of apology. Slade lets him.

“Come on.” Slade tells him, looping the leash around his arm. “Let’s get you home.”


	11. The Urge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut ahead! Warning for nonhuman genitals

Dick is back in the basement again, with a few important differences.

The first is that Slade has given him some clothes of a sort; a big fluffy bathrobe of his that’s more like a blanket than an outfit. Dick’s kneaded it into a rough nest around his dog bed. The second is that the full moon is tomorrow. He feels the pull of it lurking in the sky. Soon, very soon, he won’t have a choice about changing.

He idly chews a bone as he focuses. The chain is back around his neck, it clinks when he moves, but he isn’t afraid of it anymore. He’s much more focused on what he wants to do. He remembers how it felt to be a wolf, he remembers how it felt to be a hybrid, he remembers how the fear and desire to _run_ had changed him. He doesn’t feel that fear anymore.

He wasn’t a monster.

Being a werewolf didn’t make him a monster.

He wasn’t afraid anymore.

Rose was still his teacher but she wasn’t his only teacher anymore. Slade had started teaching him too, and he was stricter and harsher but more focused. Right now he’s resting in the form of the Wolfman, letting himself adjust to his sharpened senses and psyching himself up for a full change. His sight remained unchanged but the scents had grown strong enough they were almost as good as sight. Slade’s scent rested over all the others, thicker than the scents of food or Rose. Him sleeping here meant that the scent was centered on his bed and his body.

This was beginning to be a problem for Dick.

He hadn’t masturbated in over a month.

He’s not sure why his libido has picked now to return but it has. He puts it down to deprivation; he’s been starved for human contact for so long his body is craving a more intimate kind of contact. He’s become more comfortable here and with that his body’s delayed needs have come back to the front.

That and there’s the werewolf habit of walking around naked.

He hadn’t thought much about how when Slade curled up with him in wolf form he was technically naked, but now Slade’s started changing before leaving it is VERY much on his mind. Slade knows it and from the way Rose wrinkled her nose he knows she’s knows it too. He could fake an expression, it was much much harder to fake a pheromone. Even though he’s now a supernatural being he wasn’t one capable of doing _that_ so he’s just had to make peace with the fact that they knew he was horny. 

Dick breathes out slowly. The other problem is that now Slade trusted him not to use anything he left in reach to try to escape. That was the message behind the bed and the robe; a reward for being a model prisoner. There was something else here too. Slade had started leaving his armor here. He didn’t wear it all the time, and when he wasn’t wearing it he left it here, in human form, just in case he needed it. The thing was plated enough to stand on its own and it was a fullbody suit; Dick couldn’t help but feel it was watching him.

At first that had been intimidating and made him jump when he caught it out of the corner of his eye. After that he’d given it a close examination, he couldn’t have done it when they were fighting and the construction was…unique.

Now he’d got in touch with his feral side he was distracted by how it smelled of Slade’s sweat and adrenaline. He was sure it was that smell that was leading to his little…problem. Some smells came across more sharply than others and the smells of a victory after pitched battle where strong and heady. Dick can smell all the near misses, all the desperate last chances and hard-fought victories that had seeped into that suit. It got him hard.

Part of him _had_ been ashamed that another part of him enjoyed fighting, maybe not in the same way Bruce or Slade did, but in that rush of _action_. He loved the performance of it all, not knowing what would happen next but hunting for and finding that one moment of freedom when you escaped certain death. It was like flying.

Dick’s aware he’s getting hard, but he’d already eaten and there was still time to go before Slade returned to sleep. He wasn’t worried about having an audience as he palms himself. He wants to taste that freedom again, to balance on the edge of disaster and every time pull himself back from the end.

His lips draw back and his teeth are fangs.

He wants to run, he wants to fight and he wants to _win._

A deep rumble burbles out of his throat at the thought.

He wants to fight and kill and eat. He wants to _hunt._

As he strokes his shaft Dick thinks about all the monsters he’s hunted over the years. Many, far too many, were just unfortunate humans cursed with something supernatural, but many more had been true monsters. It’s those fights he thinks about now, of pitting himself against an apex predator all eyes and claws and teeth and turning that predator into his prey.

He inhales deeply through his nose and the scent floods his body with warmth. He’s so hard right now, precum is slicking the head of his cock, but it’s not quite enough. He shuffles over to get more comfortable, draws in another deep sniff of the smell of battle and thinks of himself as he is _now_ fighting those battles again.

He growls in satisfaction and a drip of drool oozes from the corners of his mouth at the thought of sinking his fangs in. He can already taste the remembered blood.

He wants to get down on all fours to get more comfortable but he can’t do that and touch himself at the same time. He bites his lip, keeping his eyes closed to focus on the fantasy. His hips twitch in a mockery of thrusts as Dick twists his body in an attempt to get comfortable. He crawls forwards until he finds something smooth and cool that he can rut against. The position should be uncomfortable but having something he can press his cock against feels amazing.

He growls under his breath, draws in another deep sniff of scent and grinds his cock against the thing. He presses his body against it hard, his hips pumping as he thrusts with abandon and thinks of bloodshed. Excited growls drip from his lips with the strings of saliva as he fantasizes about biting out throats and tearing chunks out of his prey.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ he’s so close! Precum is making the thing against his cock slick and he bites back a yelp at the feeling. He draws in another deep breath of scent, subconsciously moving his face closer to the source and thrusting harder and faster until the howl building up in him breaks free in a strangled yelp and he cums. The warmth breaks in him like an explosion. By the time it fades he’s panting and shaking with the release. He _needed_ that. He sits back and catches his breath. He feels like he came buckets.

He reaches down to stroke his cock a little more and notices something…new about it. His eyes fly open as he feels the bulge at its base. He…He has a _knot_?! He trails his fingers over it, feeling the thick bulbous globe at the base. It’s just as sensitive as the rest of his cock, and when he closes his hand around it the pleasure makes him gasp. He keeps his hand there and just hopes it goes away soon.

Then he realizes exactly what he’d been humping like a dog in heat.

It was Slade’s ikon suit.


End file.
